Is ICE Field Office Director David Marin A Deep State Agent For Illegal Aliens?

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David Marin is in the news again. He is again trying to sabotage the enforcement of immigration laws of the United States. And he is the top official in Los Angeles in charge of arresting illegal aliens. We saw a hint of Marin’s contempt for immigration laws recently when this author wrote about John Kelly’s discomfort with arresting illegal aliens.

David Marin, Field Office Director, ICE ERO, Los Angeles District Office, even went so far as to vigorously deny raids and roadblocks, trying to assure illegal aliens that there will be few arrests, despite the Presidential target of removing 3 million illegal aliens in the first two years of his presidency. There is no way that ICE will deport 3 million illegal alien criminals if the Los Angeles District can only arrest 160 illegal aliens, in a region where there are 1 million or so illegal aliens in Los Angeles and Orange Counties alone.

Marin apparently enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and doubled down. He invited NBC news on a ride-along to see how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE ERO) and besides some B-roll on arresting illegal aliens, Marin saw another opportunity to lobby for illegal aliens.

David Marin is the Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations in Southern California, a man who has enforced immigration law under at least four U.S. presidents.

And the title should be no surprise. The theme of the article is that illegals can’t be deported and amnesty is the only answer. The question is why Marin was lobbying for illegal aliens. Federal employees are not supposed to be involved in politics. It is a violation of the Hatch Act and Federal employees are prohibited from lobbying Congress by the Anti-Lobbying Act as well.

But Marin doesn’t care about those laws, he has an agenda, amnesty for illegal aliens:

On the way to the next arrest, I ask Marin the same question he’s been asked by scores of reporters, “What about people with families?”

His response is measured.

“That’s an unfortunate consequence of our immigration laws,” he tells me. “But we don’t make the law, our job is to enforce them.”

When I ask what it might take for millions to become legal residents, Marin says that he knows there are many hardworking immigrants trying to get their legal status in order.
“This country has become theirs,” he says. “Congress has to make that change.”

No, David Marin, this is not their country, it is our country. And Marin tells some lies about immigration enforcement in order to make President Trump look like a bad hombre:

He tells me things have changed dramatically since the mid 90s when sometimes they would receive warm welcomes during door knocks.

“They would, you know, welcome us in, sit down and ask us if we wanted coffee or something to drink and sometimes even breakfast,” Marin recalls, “while the person that we were looking for would be getting dressed and grabbing a bag and come out ready to go with us.”

Talk about a tall tale. Speaking as someone who was in the INS in the 90s, that’s just not true.

And Marin thinks that no illegal aliens should be arrested unless they are a criminal alien as well:

“It’s not really an effective use of our resources,” says Marin, “because you may arrest 50 to 60 people at one of those raids but only a small percentage will actually be criminal aliens.”

And Marin has ordered his officers to not take forceful action against illegal aliens, allowing them to defy the law with an ACLU piece of paper:

Over the last few months we have heard of legal workshops for immigrants offering training on what to do if ICE comes to your home. During role play and legal seminars, many are given a red immigrant rights cards to hand to ICE agents. It reads,
“I do not wish to speak to you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights.”

The card also says the bearer does not give permission for the home or belongings to be searched without a warrant.

“Of course we are going to abide by that,” Marin says, as we walk away.

Now, if you look at the accompanying photo of the story, the woman’s hand is clearly outside. Deportation Officers should have grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the house as she handed her protection card out the door. That would have been legal, as her hand was outside of the house.

It also raises a question, one that Congress should solve this problem by authorizing immigration officers to enter a dwelling if they have an arrest warrant and the second is that Deportation Officers should get search warrants for such dwellings where illegal aliens live. Remember, the INS used a search warrant to enter into the house to arrest Elian Gonzalez. Search warrants are easy to obtain and Federal magistrates are under-worked.

I wonder why David Marin has not instructed his officers to get search warrants? Probably because he doesn’t want to.

Instead, ICE navigates a quasi judicial, quasi administrative world with the power to detain based on an administrative judge’s order. If they are not given consent to enter a home, they can make arrests in public or possibly places of employment where the presence of a team of ICE agents can send panic through a community.

“It creates the sense that ICE is doing raids,” Marin tells me. “This is one specific person we went after. The person that answered the door, we knew that wasn’t our target, we weren’t concerned with their immigration status. We were just looking for our one target.”